Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#14. Onward (2020)
(up one spot from previous ranking)
Pixar’s most recent release was a pleasant surprise, given a marketing campaign that promised a lightweight kiddie flick (not that there’s anything wrong with a lightweight kiddie flick — and Onward is one, to an extent). In its final act, the movie finds surprising emotional depth in the story of two brothers on a quest to magically reunite with their dead father.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#16. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
(down four spots from previous ranking)
I don’t have anything bad to say about Monsters, Inc. yet it slipped to a rather low position relative to the rest of Pixar’s lineup.
I love the imagination that went into Monstropolis, and the whole idea of an economy that runs on the bureaucratic collection of children’s screams. And as I wrote in yesterday’s post, Billy Crystal and John Goodman turn in winning performances.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#18. A Bug’s Life (1998)
(up two spots from previous ranking)
When you talk about Pixar’s amazing early run, it’s easy to forget that their second film was actually pretty ordinary. A Bug’s Life certainly didn’t live up to Toy Story and was a let-down three years after that groundbreaking release.
It’s a sweet movie that feels like Pixar Lite. It’s not as laugh out loud funny or hold-your-breath exciting as its brethren, and it doesn’t have the thematic weight of the studio’s best films, but it does each of those things a little bit.
Continuing my countdown of every Pixar movie…
#20. Brave (2012)
(down one spot from previous ranking)
As a follow-up to the disappointing Cars 2, Brave wasn’t exactly a sign that Pixar had righted the ship.
It took 13 films for the studio to finally feature a female protagonist, but the result feels more in line with Disney’s traditional princess lineup than Pixar’s work.
A thin plot and an overreliance on slapstick humor take away from an otherwise touching story about a mother-daughter relationship.
My first quarantine movie challenge was to watch all of the films on the American Film Institute’s list of 25 essential musicals. I ranked those movies in a series of posts a month or so back.
For my next COVID-era cinematic trick, I have rewatched (or watched for the first time in a few cases) every Pixar movie in chronological order, ranking them as I went. I already had a Pixar ranking, so part of the fun of this exercise was seeing how these films moved up and down the list.
The movies don’t change, but we do, and sometimes we experience something differently years later based on any number of factors. As I offer up my list over the next three weeks, I will note how much each title shifted from my previous ranking.
Meet Me In Montauk 